NEW DELHI: Mirroring weakness in global stocks, domestic equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty received severe blows on Thursday, as stocks fell like a pack of cards amid brisk selling across sectors.

Yet, the Indian market was better off compared with its Asian peers, which sank up to 6 per cent. Taiwan’s TSEC 50 Index plummeted 6 per cent, Shanghai SE Composite Index 5 per cent and Nikkei225 4 per cent.

FPI outflows in the wake of a strengthening dollar, rising bond yields in the US and wobbly global crude oil prices worsened the plight of emerging markets, including India.

The Sensex closed the day 760 points, or 2.19 per cent, down at 34,001, while Nifty settled 225 points, or 2.16 per cent, lower at 10,234.

Midcaps and smallcaps fell in line with the benchmark index, with the midcap index plunging 2.34 per cent and smallcap index settling 1.41 per cent.

Let’s walk you through the highlights of Thursday’s session:

Rupee inched near 74.50The rupee inched closer to the 74.50 mark against dollar amid buying in American currency by banks and exporters. The US Federal Reserve’s apparent determination to increase interest rates over the next 12 months has driven up US Treasury yields, which have been further bolstered by good economic data. However, rupee recovered a little as trade progressed. At the time of writing of this report, the domestic currency traded at 74.10, down by 11 paise.

Who dragged my SensexAll but three stocks — ONGC, YES Bank and Hindustan Unilever — suffered losses in the Sensex pack. Infosys emerged the top drag, followed by HDFC, Tata Consultancy Services, State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank. Falling nearly 6 per cent, SBI was the top loser in terms of percentage loss. Tata Steel, Vedanta, Mahindra & Mahindra and Infosys lost up to 4 per cent.

BSE Oil & Gas jumped 3 per centAmid the carnage on Dalal Street, shares of select oil marketing companies (OMCs), including HPCL (up 14.70 per cent), IOC (up 5.39 per cent), BPCL ( up 5.11 per cent), GAIL (up 3.98 per cent), ONGC (up 2.86 per cent) and Castrol India (up 1.47 per cent), put up a stellar show. Besides a slight slump in global crude prices, reports that the government may not push oil companies to share increased subsidy burden set the mood for the OMCs. However, Reliance Industries and Oil India declined up to 1.19 per cent. The BSE Oil & Gas index closed the day 2.88 per cent higher at 12,879.

124 stocks oversold on BSEMomentum oscillator Relative Strength Index, or RSI, showed 124 stocks in the oversold zone on BSE. They included Tata Motors, Indiabulls Ventures, Vivimed Labs, M&M, Madhucon Project and CG Power and Industrial Solutions. On the other hand, 28 stocks, including Orient Tradelink, Rama Paper Mills, Samtel India, Ruchi Infrastructure and Ashari Agencies, entered the overbought zone on BSE. RSI considers the speed and direction of a stock’s price movement and measures the stock’s internal strength, based on its past performance. RSI measures momentum on a scale of 0 to 100 and most technical analysts consider an RSI value above 70 as overbought condition and below 30 as oversold.